In this interview, Glen Gilmore, author of Social Media Law for Business and principal at Gilmore Business Network talks about the impact and ramifications of the ruling for employers and employees.
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The SEC Ruling on Social Media is particularly important to investor relations professionals, who are charged with distributing information that could impact their company’s stock price.
The SEC released Regulation Fair Disclosure back in 2000 to prevent institutional investors from gaining an unfair trading advantage over individual investors by requiring publicly listed companies to nonselectively release material information.
Since then, companies have been complying with Reg FD by using paid newswire services like PR Newswire and BusinessWire to satisfy their nonselective disclosure requirements. As would be expected, the SEC Ruling on Social Media prompted a defensive posture from the paid PR newswire services.
But if the SEC’s 2008 Guidance on the Use of Company Websites for Corporate Disclosures is any indication, the new SEC Ruling on Social Media is unlikely to provoke a sea change in how listed companies disclose their news. In this interview, Glen discusses these and other issues that the new ruling on social media have brought into the limelight for investor relations professionals.
SEC Ruling on Social Media Interview Covers:
- Caveats to the SEC Ruling on Social Media
- IR industries response to the SEC Ruling on Social Media
- Practical methods for giving investors advance notice to impending material disclosure via social media
- Will the new SEC guidance on social media spur more embedding of social activity on company websites?
- Implementation challenges of the new SEC social media ruling
- Does the inclusion of tweets on Bloomberg terminals make Twitter a more or less risky venue?
- Navigating material disclosures between personal and branded social media accounts?
- Updates HR managers should consider making to their employee handbook as a result of this new social media ruling from the SEC.
- http://forimmediaterelease.biz/index.php?/C8
- http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenmakovsky/2013/04/11/the-sec-and-social-media/
- http://blogs.wsj.com/cfo/2013/04/08/companies-take-cautious-approach-to-social-media-disclosures
- http://www.bulldogreporter.com/dailydog/article/sec-ruling-changes-the-distribution-game-social-media-now-acceptable-for-material-0
Eric Schwartzman is Founder and CEO of online social media training provider Comply Socially, which helps employers manage the risk and capitalize on the opportunities of social media in the workplace.
He is also an independent communications consultant for hire to businesses, global nonprofits, the US Military, US Federal government agencies and foreign governments. His consulting services include digital strategy, social media audits, social media policy development, online public relations, social media marketing, search engine optimization and web development.
Schwartzman founded iPRSoftware, his best-selling book “Social Marketing to the Business Customer” is the first book devoted exclusively to social media for business-to-business communications, and he’s founding chair of the Digital Impact Conference in NYC.
You can also find him on Google+.